It is known to compress a row or rows of articles prior to pushing the row into a bagger, so that the maximum number of articles can be placed into a bag of fixed dimensions. Particularly, this is important in those instances in which the articles are wrapped and compressible, such as is the case with disposable feminine hygiene articles. However, the conventional prebagger compression unit for doing this provides compression on only 5 of the six sides of the row or rows of articles, because the non-contacted sixth side is the direction that the compressed row is then pushed to enter it into the bagger. This occasionally creates a blow-out problem during compression--some of the articles in the row having non-contact on the sixth side are squeezed out of the row, and the row collapses or is jammed with non-aligned articles. Particularly this is a problem as the row is made longer and longer for larger sized packaging, or when there is a double row, one in front that is fully contacted, and one in back that is not contacted on the sixth side.
Hence, prior to this invention there has been a need for a prebagging compression apparatus and method that avoid the blow-out problems noted above.